What do I do with the portfolio?
Publish! Publish! Publish! Find a way to share the portfolio with others. Allow your child to hear words of praise and feedback from people other than yourself.
Spend the summer illustrating and binding your portfolio. This a personal favorite of mine. My daughter loves seeing her work again. She also really has fun coming up with artwork to complement the writing. We just don't have the time to do this during the school year. Summer provides a perfect time to enjoy this fun project.
Assess the progress your student made during the year and give yourself a big pat on the back! Create goals for the next year!
When you are creating goals think in two areas. Are there any forms that you need to concentrate on? For example, we wrote a great deal of poetry this year. Next year we will need to address more responses to reading (book reports) and short research reports.
After thinking about form, think about style. What specific concepts would you like to work on to improve writing in general? This year we worked a great deal on descriptive words and details. Next year we might wish to focus more on great beginnings and endings and writing sentences of different lengths.
Finally, be sure to check out writing scope and sequences. Look at the grade level expectations for three years. Check out the previous, present, and next years' standards. What do you need to continue to cover as it needs work? What did you neglect to cover? What should you be preparing your child to learn.
I'll never forget when my daughter was in second grade and I told her we would be learning about the Revolutionary War. I was a little concerned that she would have no frame of reference to understand the time period. However she piped up, "Mom, I know about that war. I just read the Magic Treehouse book about the Revolutionary War. George Washington was in that war!" Big sigh of relief! I knew we would already have some background information to help the learning process along. This is also true of writing! If you are going to write a book report in two years, it would go much more smoothly if your child can write a confident paragraph. So check out what skills you will be working on in future years so you can adequately prepare.
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